Арсен Аветисов – French Narratives. How France Taught the World to Live, Debate, and Maintain Balance (страница 1)

French Narratives

How France Taught the World to Live, Debate, and Maintain Balance

Arsen Avetisov

Translator Gregory Attaryan

© Arsen Avetisov, 2026

© Gregory Attaryan, translation, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0069-5824-1

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

To my mother and her innate talent as a narrator.

Why France?

What you see depends on how you look.

To truly see and feel what surrounds us, we must slow down a little, perhaps even stop. Look around and finally allow ourselves to pay attention to this world. Sense its taste, colour, and smell.

Sometimes a taste for life is a matter of conviction. But the absence of taste is always a matter of life habits. How can we return to life’s subtle flavours? How can we once again savour the rich adventure of our existence? How can we attune our perception of life? For this, we must tell a story.

And if you want to know how you truly live and what will become of you, think about what you were taught and what you have learnt. A person learns from lessons and stories. What stories do you learn from?

There is a place in the world whose history is itself this incredible sensory textbook. A textbook of the art of living. The experiment with globalisation has shown that true competitive advantage comes from what only we know. Perhaps our particular knowledge isn’t explicitly defined, but it’s always felt as our exclusive competence, as personal life experience. It’s what shapes our character, our distinctiveness, our purpose. It’s what exists in our thoughts, feelings, in our understanding and sense of happiness.

Each nation, country, or people does this in its own way, oscillating from total control and adherence to its historical mission to fatalism-laden sailing under a bright flag in an ocean of opinions, ideas, and directions. But there are nations that have found – not always stable, but nevertheless – a balance between these two extremes. And their knowledge is a priceless revelation.

However strange it may seem, form and depth are created not by the object itself, but by its shadow. And this sometimes applies to us, to entire countries, nations, and their histories. Today, when thousands of people lose their lives daily, we, in conditional safety and perceiving life as an endless battle, may never actually begin to live. We are constantly and insistently offered survival. The question is, how to do this? And it’s not a method or technology. It’s a genuine art. It’s an entire story.

For example, the story of France. A story in which, immersing oneself despite all the differences between us, one might wish to be born or become French to share their unbearable thirst for life.

In the 1st century BC, in honour of the Roman victory over the tribes inhabiting the Alps, a colossal statue of Emperor Augustus was erected at the highest point of the modern town of La Turbie in the Alpes-Maritimes region. The enormous monument served both as a lighthouse and a vivid reminder to all rebellious peoples of the power and might of the Roman Empire and its emperor.

Distance lends perspective. But to understand the essence of this great thing, one must always pay attention to details. This is what numerous tourists do when visiting the restored remains of the monument to the vanished empire’s grandeur. Great things are indeed worth examining up close. Especially if this great thing is life itself.

Where does this life-affirming and rebellious spirit come from in the descendants of peoples conquered by the Romans, who through the centuries became one of the brightest and most creative nations? Where does such refinement and sensuality come from, such concentration on living rather than merely existing? And how did the country and nation carry through millennia their main enchantment, this secret guidance and the very concept of the ‘Art of Living’ – Art de vivre?

Say to yourself the names of several countries, and at the end say, ‘France…’ France. Listen as you pronounce it. France… Doesn’t it seem that the word ‘France’ generates special sensations, different from other words? Something light, sensual, lace-like, with accents of love, romance, and impression? And along with this, something incredibly bold, epic, and sacrificial. Something to which we are so receptive from birth and to which we aspire and dream of all our lives.

France has no impressive reserves of minerals, no oil rigs, no large-scale mines. But it has always managed to preserve more valuable resources, constantly renewed by it: the intelligence and talent of its citizens. This is precisely the stratum, the source that has given and continues to give the world inventive scientists, skilled craftsmen, brave travellers, romantic entrepreneurs, engineers, diplomats, and world leaders.

The land of France, together with the fruits of peasants and artisans, skilfully protected traditions and the taste of centuries-old cultural heritage. Despite constant wars and destruction, it preserved the character of its cities and landscapes, recreating this atmosphere of beauty each time. The formation of statehood and the development of its society raised worldwide attention to and attractiveness of the country’s social life.

Undoubtedly, France owes such a role in the world to the dramatic character of its history, to the constant, sometimes desperate struggle for freedom, to its miraculous rebirths, to its 40 kings, two emperors, 23 presidents, and also to politicians, revolutionaries, ministers, and heroes. And on the other hand, to its enlighteners, writers, artists, architects, and thinkers. And to its people.

There is no doubt that all nations are unique in their own way. But how many of them arose from such an incredible mixture of different peoples as France? How many of them became the birthplace of progressive ideas, the foremost of which is the Declaration of the idea of being human? How does the thirst for beauty, order, and balance coexist with regular street outbursts of emotion from categorical impatience with injustice? How, on the threshold of perceived chaos, does an incredible striving for wholeness arise? In a single instant, how is everything mobilised and committed to maintaining a balanced yet vibrant life? Where does this incredible patriotism come from, this national idea of protecting beauty, freedom, and life? Such a life that can only be lived in this history, in this architecture, and in this nature? To live in awareness and acceptance of all this as a deliberate choice, to allow oneself to say the eternal words ‘Life is art…’ at least once?

Foreword

One cannot begin life anew, but one can continue it differently

Le gain de notre vie, ce n’est pas qu’elle soit longue, c’est qu’elle soit bien employée. (The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use.)

The French don’t rush through life – that’s why they succeed.

The French art of life is rarely reduced to pleasure. Its essence is measure. Not renunciation and not excess, but precise calibration of effort and presence, action and pause, aspiration and attention.

Happiness here is neither a goal nor a result. It’s a way of moving through life without losing contact with what is happening now. The French early on made the sense organs an entry to thinking: to see, to hear, to feel means to understand. But what remains decisive isn’t the sensation itself but how it’s interpreted and how it’s integrated into the picture of the world.

Intellect without bodily experience is incomplete. Pleasure isn’t opposed to reason; it passes through it. Therefore, work, food, conversation, and rest aren’t divided into ‘important’ and ‘secondary’ but are gathered into a single rhythm. A pause doesn’t hinder effectiveness; it sustains it.

French directness, the inclination to argue and grumble, is a form of critical presence. Discontent is directed not inward at life, but outward, at circumstances, authority, and the world’s imperfection. It’s a way of releasing tension without losing oneself.

Joie de vivre – this is lightness as the ability to let go without devaluing. Not resignation, but acceptance of changeability. Not escape from complexity, but refusal to live in constant haste that deprives life of rich density.

The art of life here isn’t about knowing how to enjoy but knowing how to stop in time. To notice, choose, value. To see life not as a race, but as a space in which one can already be.

It’s precisely with this, with the search for a measure between aspiration and presence, that we begin our conversation about the French balance.

Part One: The French Model

Chapter 1: The Secret of the Golden Ratio

You are not paid to work hard. In fact, you are not paid for effort at all. You are paid for results. It’s not what you do; it’s what you get done.

La force d’un homme ne se doit pas juger par ses efforts extraordinaires, mais par sa conduite ordinaire. (The power of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.)

Measure as a Form of Life

The golden ratio is a proportion in which the parts and the whole are in harmony. It’s found in nature, architecture, art, and, far more rarely, in human life. Meanwhile, the golden ratio isn’t only a formula for beauty but also a rare ability to calibrate desires, efforts, goals, and life itself.